Fly Me To The Moons

No matter how much you plan and prepare, sometimes you just have to be very lucky. Full view please.

I had my camera imaging The Moon and Jupiter occultation through my telescope at about 10 second intervals when I noticed the lights from a plane close to the moon. I realised that there was a chance that it would pass in front of the moon, so I quickly canceled the remote timer I was using to take the shots and instead started shooting high speed continuous frames. I managed to get this plane crossing the moon in five individual frames just as Jupiter was about to be occulted by The Moon.

This is a two image composite. The Moon, Jupiter and the plane are all one single image. I then took an overexposed image to bring up the Galilean Moons of (from left to right) Io, Callisto and Europa. Ganymede had already been occulted by The Moon.

18/02/2013
Canon 60D (Prime Focus)
10inch F/4 Newtonian Telescope
NEQ6 Pro Goto Telescope Mount set on Lunar Tracking
ISO 100
Single 1/200th of a second exposure for The Moon, Plane and Jupiter
Single 1/10th of a second exposure for the moons of Jupiter